I'm not sure what I'm doing tonight. I may wander the streets or stay home, and watch the gleeful mayhem on tv. I'm supposed to be on the air at 5:00 so I might as well stay up. No parties at least not tonight.
I have a wedding, and a funeral to go to next week. Also some sort of post holiday staff blowout is planned for the proles at my place of semi-employment. So there's stuff to do.
I'm blessed.
I have a home, food, a job, friends, and a sister that cares deeply for me. Well okay I'd like a sweet, tax exempt, real-estate deal. That, and maybe start my own religion, but otherwise I'm cool.
I wish you all well.
'Remember, watch ya damned back this ain't Disneyland ya know!
So here we are digging out from our surprise Christmas, Boxing Day Arctic Apocalypse. Btw if you look just above it snowed in my bedroom!! Swell. No problem though as you can see the City sent over one of their miniature plows to clean things up. Is this a great country or what?!
Actually other than the frostbite, falling down alot, nearly being run over by some sort of tracked vehicle, getting sick, a massive headache, nausea, and snowmen it was loads of fun!
I hope we gets loads of the same for the rest of the season. Imagine just mere months ago we were breaking all sorts of heat records in the region,..109f, 110f, even 115f for a few hours last July.
All symptoms of Global Heating.
It's real simple comrades. The oceans are heating up,..thanks to us, and assorted natural mechanisms. This screws up the worlds winds which causes harsher storms, tornadoes in Brooklyn, and London for example. Floods, droughts the works.
Did I mention Blizzards,..Thunder Blizzards!
Wow ya should have been there. The whole sky thundering, lighting up in neon yellow, and green, and the wind screaming with blinding snow. McMurdo Station Antarctica? Nope. 14th Street Manhattan.
I think someone should tell former Gov. Palin about this.
Imagine my horror on waking after a nap to find that the blessed Emerald City was in the grip of a Nor'easter,..that's a gawd awful terrifying blizzard to you auslanders.
When I zonked out it was like this...
Now it's like this!
What the hell happened. This was supposed to blow out to sea, and now it's in my soxs!
One the up side nolonger being a property owner I don't have to shovel bleep. Old guys thinking they're still 21, and hacking at snow drifts is called the "Heart Attack Special" by medical techs. Me, I'm sitting this one out.
History, and the American sensibility. Just a few thoughts on the subject as I roam through the common era.
Recently I had the dusty honor along with a few other comrades of saving a portion of the corporate memory of the Pacifica Foundation. An organization the runs non-commercial radio stations around this swell country of ours.
Founded by Pacifists I’m always proud to say.
The event I speak of was actually a rather routine saving, and cataloging of old papers, and booklets. It was a huge disheveled pile of debris.
Progressives have this affinity for clutter. Why? Well that’s a whole other rant, but to the saving of the dusty records.
These were program guides, memos, and assorted deranged broadsides that we, before the partial demise of printed matter, used to mail to our dear listeners, and supporters. Items from the 1960’s through the 90’s.
These bits of our past were destined for one of the mafia owned land fills, or recycling mills. However being aging hippies, and so naturally sentimental we saved the lot. We cleaned it up. Put it all in fresh folders, boxed them, and properly stored them.
Why bother? All that sweaty work for just old schedules, announcements, and heated personal memos about the egomania of long departed personalities. We bothered because these fragments are about who we were, and how we became what we are.
All the above self serving blather is to say that relatively few of us, that is few Americans actively care much for history. That, and more important it’s preservation.
(Yes of course there is the gleeful sub-culture of history buffs, and assorted re-enactors, but I speak here of the mainstream.)
I had thought that as a people we have a particular contempt for history. I’ve found that it’s different. Indeed perhaps worse.
To have contempt you must have a knowledge of what you despise. We on the whole don’t. What we have is a near total oblivious disregard for history. So many of us in the American universe are free floating in an eternal now. Days, years or centuries past are at best vague notions.
This is also a universe that contemplates no future.
I’m always fascinated to speak to my fellow United Statesers. Intelligent, capable folks who have no idea how things came to be as they are, and are content to remain so.
I don’t mean to disparage my fellow citizens. ...much. I’m just interested in how they manage to live in such a totally blank reality. Live the do, and happily so in this alternate realm. I have the image of people calmly reading blank books. Page after page of pristine emptiness. Newspapers without a dot of ink upon them.
So strange.
Btw they are as mystified by us. Those that bother to note the past, and wonder at the future. Again this is not, well not exactly a judgment of the choice made by so many to be uninformed. After all it ‘is’ easier. It is much easier to get by without troubling yourself with all that dead, and gone static, and foolishness. My heavens don’t people have enough on their minds, and they do.
As I say I just have a curiosity about that choice.
Of course there’s the idea that this is encouraged. An uniformed citizenry is an easily led, and managed one. However that’s a different rant for another time.
Well it was Christmas morning with the Radio on in the Emerald City. Some of my dear, and blissfully aging broadcast comrades welcomed the return of the sun.
Well that, the Yule, and Issac Newton's birthday were celebrated with happy chatter about the federal espionage act, and the high price of cheese.
There's Santa above there. He's our former union rep also present was Mr. Mouse, and assorted very dear comrades.
Btw that's me above with the saintly aura. Amazing ain't it. all the photos of yours truly came out looking all holy,..or blured. Yep it's me, and the celestial management all chummy, and happy together. Well that or the camera needs fixing.
This is an Arch built at the turn of the 20th century to honor the Union Armies from the American Civil War. Btw the lights on the tree change color,..cool.
The following is a short excerpt of a forth coming Village Voice interview conducted by Gore Vidal with Mr. Mouse.
G.V., Mr. Mouse,..eh this is how you wish to be known?
Mr.M., Yes. Although rodents do not use surnames or titles. Mr. Mouse will do for the convenience of humans, and cats.
G.V., ...cats?
G.V., Very well. Mr. Mouse there has been a considerable stir within the Beltway, and indeed throughout the national political realm concerning your recent statements on you-tube, and the obscure eccentric blog Sidneyland.
Mr.M., Um, that's "New Sydneyland, and yes a "stir" was precisely my intent. There was of course nothing new in my statement. Your more thoughtful writers, clergy, and political progressives have been saying this for decades.
G.V., Yes, and being ignored.
Mr.M., Indeed. Which is why I felt if these very rational, and straightforward ideas came from, well what you would call a common mouse. If I or one of my nation came forward perhaps there would finally be some notice.
G.V., Unfortunately this has not entirely been the case. At least not as you intended.
Mr.M., No. The human traditions of gross stupidity, and missing the point has come into full effect. The regrettable "stir" I caused is the panic, and hysteria rippling now throughout your species.
All my appearance has done is inform your kind that rodents are sentient have a complex culture, and advanced technologies. Some more advanced than your own.
Not only that, but we've been observing you, and your mysterious, at least to us, behavior from the beginning.
G.V., The beginning?
Mr.M., Yes, that time 200,000 years ago when the Krell planted your kind on this world.
The text of Mr. Mouse's video statement on the nation's political health.
My fellow Americans, and Mice.
The harsh uncertainty of these times have called ‘much’ into question for us as Americans.
So,.. who are we ? What are we ? Where in history are we going ?
Well I may just be a cloth puppet, but this is how I see it.
We are a free people living within a relatively free, and democratic system of laws.
Our imperfect, but evolving Republic is ‘still’ worthy of our labors. That is our labors towards it’s further perfection.
This perfection means the creation, and maintainability of a governance that is ‘less’ cruel, ‘more’ generous, and ‘more’ loving that what we seem to be enduring now.
This I believe is who we are.
This is where we’re going, and this is the faith we keep.
At Christmas, 1914, there occurred several informal truces at various points along the trench-lines of Northern France and Belgium.
It may well be that there were other places where truces took place, but our precise knowledge of events is limited by the amount of direct, eyewitness testimony which has so far been discovered.
Nevertheless, there are enough trustworthy reports (and even a few photographs) to convince us that something extraordinary happened that first Christmas of the war, and that it was not entirely an isolated happening.
The image of opposing soldiers, shaking hands with each other on one day and then deliberately trying to kill each other the next, is a powerful one, and one which is part and parcel of remembrance of the Great War.
It was, perhaps, a last example of open-handed chivalry before the squalor and horror of the next three years changed the old world forever.
(The rest of this story is here, http://www.fylde.demon.co.uk/xmas.htm)
This happy story is from my never to be published book "The Secret History of Everything". This is one of the chapters on the world of Toons. That immortal race of beings that hides in plain sight.
Our tale so to speak describes the origins of out dear pal Daffy Duck.
Daffy Duck was born or should I say hatched on May 12, 1923. His original destiny was to be guest of honor in a boxed lunch at an annual convention of vacuum cleaner salesmen. However history had other plans for this unique foul.
Daffy's formative years were spent in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of a Harlem oriental noodle shop. This informed him that there was a better world outside the oppressive confines of an American race ghetto.
The blossoming Harlem Renaissance was a cornucopia of wonders for the young Daffy. Naturally this led him to the stage. Daffy Duck performed publicly for the first time at the famed Apollo Theater on amateur night.
He charmed the audience with his kid act. He juggled broken beer bottles while swallowing watermelons. He'd then squat, and lay them while doing the Charleston. True he was a male, but to the audience a duck was a duck.
Anyway it brought the house down.
..hey keep reading it gets better.
Josephine Baker was so impressed by his act that she took him along on her tour of France. "My little Black Duckie" she called him. Josephine while making the rounds of the jazz clubs in the City of Light would introduce Daffy as her nephew.
The sophisticated Parisians didn't blink at this. They took it to be just another bizarre American custom.
Daffy while doing his act at the Cafe 'Celluloid was noticed by a famous American producer. Yep it was the old proto nazi himself,..Walt Disney.
He was seated at a private table with his protégé a young black mouse named Mickey. Walt liked them young, and dark. Also at the table was a very well dressed German gentleman named Goebbels.
After Daffy's performance in which he played Beethoven on a grand piano while juggling several large bottles of nitroglycerin with his butt. He was invited over to Mr. Disney's table for a chat.
Disney who was sipping owls head soup from a Ming Dynasty bowl seemed a pleasant affable sort of fellow. On the other hand his little companion, the mouse, was obnoxious. Indeed he was more than a little vulgar.
The disheveled rodent kept passing wind, giggling, and putting a strange white powder in his nose. The German gentleman just sat there stiffly staring at nothing while slowly sipping calf's blood through a polished platinum straw.
Daffy now a worldly duck quickly sized up the scam. He'd been to a number of parties like this already. Before Mr. Disney could say anything Daffy told him, "..I don't take it up the ass!"
The German's left eye twitched.
The little mouse began laughing like a hissing like a steam pipe. He was also masturbating spilling all the white powder onto the floor as he did.
Walt Disney turned to the crazed rodent, and in a lazy tone said, "Aw Mickey now look what you've done."
"How many times have I told you that stuff is expensive. Now Doctor Goebbels will have to get us more."
Walt confided in Daffy, "You'll have to excuse my young friend."
"He is after all a mouse, and so has a rather limited intellectual, and emotional repertoire."
However as for 'your' lovely black ass please be reassured that back door grease jobs are not something I'm likely to be doing for quite some time."
"Or so my doctors tell me."
"Seems I acquired a rather unfortunate condition while on holiday in the Philippines."
"No, I have something entirely different in mind for you."
Besides his interesting lifestyle Walt Disney was a businessman. One without an once of sentiment so he made Daffy an ironclad offer!
Of course Walt was aware of Daffy. The Toon grapevine was buzzing with his name since his Apollo days. Everyone knew this was a duck to watch, and watch the shark of Hollywood did. Disney had his operatives secretly film all of Daffy's acts.
Walt especially liked the self-immolation routines.
Daffy would blow himself up with a barrel of dynamite. As the smoke cleared his blackened bill would slam to the floor as his eyeballs bounced about the stage,...brilliant thought Disney!
Walt said to Daffy, "I intend to use you, and your colorful Toon colleagues to mold the dreams of America, and then the World!"
Mr. Disney pointed to the German gentleman who seemed to be injecting something into his arm. "Doctor Goebbels here has been invaluable to me in forming the foundations of what I intend to be an Empire of Dreams!"
"My Dreams!"
Clearly this is a gang of fruitcakes thought Daffy,..rich fruitcakes. So Daffy asked a question. A question that has led many a Toon down the road to perdition.
"How much?"
Ahhhh, old Disney smiled like a shark circling an overturned lifeboat full of children.
"How much?" "...why as much as you want my dear lad,..sign here."
